Modelling the fire performance of structural timber floors

View/Open

Author

Date

Permanent Link

This paper describes numerical modelling to predict the fire resistance of engineered timber floor systems. The floor systems under investigation are timber composite floors (various timber joist and box floor cross sections), and timber-concrete composite floors. The paper describes 3D numerical modelling of the floor systems using finite element software, carried out as a sequential thermo-mechanical analysis. Experimental testing of these floor assemblies is also being undertaken to calibrate and validate the models, with a number of full scale tests to determine the failure mechanisms for each floor type and assess fire damage to the respective system components. The final outcome of this research will be simplified design methods for calculating the fire resistance of a wide range of engineered timber floor systems.